Five Tips for Driving Traffic with Guest Blog Posts

Guest blog posts are the internships of the Internet. You won’t necessarily get paid for the hard work you put into your post on someone else’s site, but you might build invaluable relationships and connections if you prove yourself sufficiently. Whether you’re an aspiring blog superstar or the owner of an already established site, guest blog posts are helpful. For established blogs, a guest post can provide new insight into your topic. Chances are, you’ve written the majority of your articles, so another opinion will help diversify the site. It will also help you find new potential employees, as it will essentially be an audition for future writers. For aspiring bloggers, the benefits of a well-written guest post are endless.

First, submitting a guest post to a blog in your industry will help you build strong relationships with other professionals in your field. The other writers for the blog will learn who you are after you impress them with a guest post, and their trusted readers will also come to respect your opinion. Building relationships with the owners of the website could provide job opportunities in the future when those people need a new writer or collaborator for the site. Once you build these relationships, you could also ask these acquaintances for professional favors in the future, such as promoting your blog on their site.

Similarly, you might also get new business opportunities through your guest blog post. If you own a business or are an expert in your field, readers of the blog might personally message you if they’re impressed by the knowledge you shared asking for the rate you charge for your service. For example, if you write a guest post about proper lawn care on a gardening blog, people might start contacting you and asking whether or not you offer lawn care services. If you do, you’ve got a new client. If you don’t, you’ve got a new business. Many people read blogs for DIY tips to improve their lives or business, but they’d rather have someone else do it for them if they find a reliable expert.

Most importantly, guest blogging can help you build links. This is not necessarily the most important benefit in terms of brand building, but it is certainly the best way to get more traffic to your own blog and boost your Google SERP. Every time you submit a guest blog post to another website, you can include an “About the Author” paragraph. In that paragraph, you can include a link to your own blog. Backlinks are one of the most effective ways to increase your page ranking on Google, so giving yourself backlinks through guest posts will most definitely get you more business, more web traffic, and more profit. In addition to including your own link on your post, the authors of the existing blog will build a relationship with you, and there’s a good chance they’ll link to your blog in the future as a favor, which will provide even more backlinks.

To make these things happen, your blog post needs to be stellar. Each guest post should be the best article you’ve ever written, because you have a single moment to impress readers. In addition to finding the perfect topic, the following tips will help you optimize your guest post for success.

Submit Regularly

Posting once as a guest on a blog might get you noticed, but you’ll have a better chance at impressing readers and writers alike if you post more than once. Once you find a blog that accepts guest posts and is popular in your industry, try submitting regularly. Readers will obviously start to notice you if they continue to read your articles, and you might become an important part of the blog. When the blog owners and writers look at the metrics and see that your posts are getting a lot of attention, they’ll respect your opinion and your personal blog even more.

Be Consistent

No matter what you’re writing about on what blog or when, you should be consistent in your style. If you’re not consistent, you won’t appeal to one single audience, and no one will want to look into reading your regular work. If you prove that you have your own voice and can cover any topic with ease, you’ll develop fans outside of your website that can easily be translated to your own blog.

Always Deliver Quality

Again, each guest post you write should be your absolute best work. Anything less won’t impress your audience enough to drive traffic to your own blog. Make sure the quality of every guest blog post you write is outstanding. Have other people read your work before posting to make sure it makes sense, and always triple check your spelling and grammar. Excellent quality is the only way you can impress your audience and your host blog enough to drive traffic, and in many cases, the only way your content will actually be posted.

Do Your Own Research

In addition to providing quality, you need to provide value. Don’t simply reword another article that you’ve read, because your readers could just as easily read that too. Instead, create a post from your own ideas. That’s the only way you’ll truly provide value to the host blog. By doing so, more traffic will be driven to that blog, and they’ll notice that their numbers are increasing from your posts. Research is difficult, but putting in a few hours to collect your background information before writing will go a long way.

Include a Link

Finally, don’t forget to include a link in your “About the Author” section. If the host blog doesn’t permit that section, try tying in a link to your website in the content of the guest post. Getting backlinks shouldn’t be the only reason you write a guest blog post, but they are sure to drive more traffic to your site.

Writing guest blog posts for websites related to your industry is an excellent way to drive traffic to your own site. As long as you make sure the posts are high quality and valuable, they might even get you new business. Start researching popular blogs in your field and find out which ones accept guest blog posts. Then, write your post, make sure its perfect, and send it out in hopes that it will be published.